Driving experience

Andrea Caillouet designed the set for AtticRep's staging of “Hellcab.” The set was inspired by an installation she created, as well as her time as a cabdriver.

Andrea Caillouet designed the set for AtticRep's staging of “Hellcab.” The set was inspired by an installation she created, as well as her time as a cabdriver.

Photo: Helen L. Montoya / San Antonio Express-News

Photo: Helen L. Montoya / San Antonio Express-News

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Andrea Caillouet designed the set for AtticRep's staging of “Hellcab.” The set was inspired by an installation she created, as well as her time as a cabdriver.

Andrea Caillouet designed the set for AtticRep's staging of “Hellcab.” The set was inspired by an installation she created, as well as her time as a cabdriver.

Photo: Helen L. Montoya / San Antonio Express-News

Driving experience

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With visual artist Andrea Caillouet, the cast and crew of AtticRep's “Hellcab” got a twofer.

They got a set designer for the show, which opens Thursday. And they also got someone who could talk about what it's like to drive a cab — an invaluable resource for a show set in and around a Chicago taxi.

“It was very hard,” she said. “I would say the most important thing I learned is, if you take a cab, you should tip generously.”

Caillouet drove a cab for about six months a few years ago, an experience that fed an installation she did for Artpace's “Window Works” series in 2007.

“The windows were whited out and I cut openings that were in the shape of car windows. And then I projected from the inside images of what you would see as you were driving by,” she said. “So it would be as if you were looking out the car window, what you would see going by in different parts of San Antonio.”

The play, written by former San Antonian Will Kern, was also inspired by real-life experience. He spent a few years driving a cab in Chicago and based “Hellcab” on that time.

The centerpiece of Caillouet's set is recognizably a cab — front seat, back seat, dashboard, steering wheel — but it's also not a completely faithful representation. The hood consists of crumpled metal and an artfully arranged jumble of car parts.

Caillouet was inspired partly by the late artist John Chamberlain's sculptures, abstract works he made from scrap metal.

“There's no way that we would be able to make it look realistic without actually having a real car, and then it would look silly,” Caillouet said. “I tried to figure out a way to use things that represent a car in a way that seemed sculpturally interesting.”

That jibed with director Stacey Connelly's vision for the show. She's seen the play done several times, with a range of approaches to the cab. For AtticRep's take, she said, “We knew we didn't want anything that was realistic,” she said. “Stylistically, the play is closer to improv and sketch comedy than it is to a realistic, linear three-act play.”

To her, the mangled front of Caillouet's cab says a lot about what it's like to drive a cab.

“She was wanting to create a cab that showed the difficulty of being a cab driver and the challenges of city life,” Connelly said. “One of the things I really kind of like about her idea is that the cab is really kind of a wreck, and all that the word 'wreck' implies. It's just seen a lot, and there's something kind of broken about it, but it still keeps going.”

Caillouet also painted the walls of the theater. Long strips of color stretch across the walls, suggestive of the horizon and of taillights streaking by.

The project is Caillouet's first set design. As it happens, it's come during a time when her schedule is densely packed: She's finishing a public art project, she's maintaining a busy career as a graphic artist and she and her husband are preparing for an extended stay in Taiwan.

“When (AtticRep Managing Director Rick Frederick) asked me, I was like, oh my God, the timing is so horrible for me right now, but it was such the perfect thing that I couldn't not do it,” she said.